Devices for producing wood shavings from pieces of wood have long been known in art. By way of example, Canadian Patent No. 557,559 which issued to Steiner et al. on May 20, 1958, for an invention entitled Production of Shavings from Pieces of Wood discloses that it was then known to produce shavings for the manufacture of wood particle panels and other similar composite products. Pieces of wood waste are disintegrated on rotary-disk type shredding machines into shavings having pre-determined and properly chosen properties and dimensions, particularly shavings of a flat and pliably thin shape. Such rotary-disk machines include a rotating disk equipped with a number of blades whose edges extend along respective radii of the disk. Pieces of a wood of a given length are placed into a feed box which is traversed against the rotating blades. The shavings may be sub-divided by the use of scoring knives rotating together with and ahead of the cutter blades mounted on the rotating-disk. The blade-carrying disk extends in a vertical plane and has a horizontal shaft. The feed box is pressed and moved along with the woodpieces on a horizontal path towards the blades.
Other prior art such as Canadian Patent Application No. 2,132,876 filed by Rice and published Sep. 30, 1993, entitled Apparatus and Method for Making Wood Curls discloses a mechanized disk flaker for producing curled food flakes. The disk flaker includes a rotatable disk plate having one or more cutting knives mounted to the disk plate so as to provide a slight rake angle between the tool face and a plane perpendicular to the direction of tool travel. The disk flaker includes rotatable and removable knife holders and also includes the use of scoring knives.
In the prior art, applicant is also aware of Canadian Patent No. 991,833 which issued to Schaefer on Jun. 29, 1976, for A Knife for a Wood Shaving Machine. Schaefer discloses that the use of scoring knives may be replaced by the use scoring protrusions formed on the cutting edges of the knives used to produce wood shavings. In particular, Schaefer discloses the use of a bent-out cutting portion which results in a scoring edge, or a U or V-shaped bead which produces a scoring beak located outside the cutting edge, or the use of a punched-out flow extending from the cutting edge transversely where the blade is bent out to provide a scoring edge.
In the prior art, applicant is also aware of Canadian Patent No. 630,297 which issued Fahrni on Nov. 7, 1961, for A Process and Apparatus for Producing Shaving. Consistent with other prior art, Fahrni discloses the use of a shaving blade and a scoring blade, both mounted on a rotating disk where both the shaving blade and the scoring blade project from the disk face. Scoring blade includes a plurality of spaced groove-cutting projections which extend from the disk face by a distance slightly greater than the distance of the cutting edge of the shaving blade from the disk face. Fahrni also discloses that the shaving blade and the scoring blade may be included in a single unitary cutting means, or may be separate elements mounted in contact with each other or spaced from each other.